


Talk Some Sense to Me

by picarats



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23914249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/picarats/pseuds/picarats
Summary: "I think I was drunk when I met you.""To be honest," the farmer replied, "that would make sense. You point-blank told me that you didn't know me and asked why I was talking to you, which probably requires a loss of tact. Unless you're just like that?"Albeit begrudgingly, Shane is the one that delivers the dog to the Farmer. It turns out that they have more than a few things in common.(Canon AU.)
Relationships: Shane/Player (Stardew Valley)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 67





	Talk Some Sense to Me

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own anything.

Shane wasn’t exactly sure where he’d found the dog.

It was definitely on the way home from the saloon, _that_ he knew. The thing was, though, Shane tended to forget that part of his day; it wasn’t really worth remembering the practised stumble he made when he did it every evening. The way he saw it, so long as he didn’t fall into the river, Shane was fine. It would probably sober him up, as well, so that too was a gamble he was okay taking.

Marnie called it being drunk and reckless. Shane tended to listen to Jas more, and he was pretty sure she couldn’t spell _alcoholism,_ let alone staple its meaning all over Shane’s personality like everyone else in the rest of the town had.

Well, almost everyone.

Shane hadn’t met that new farmer yet; he’d heard, though, from Marnie, who’d heard from Mayor Lewis that they were ‘polite’ — though whether that politeness held a hidden sarcasm or some misplaced, naïve center to it was lost to the town gossip mill. He’d seen them, as well — but only the edge of a wisp of hair when they’d introduced themselves to the rest of the bar. It was possible they’d greeted him, too, but Shane had been nursing his third beer by then.

The story, that he could remember, went like this: two weeks before the farmer had moved to Pelican Town, Shane had woken up with his alarm to a dog in his face.

After promptly freaking out, he had thrown off the covers, raced downstairs, told Marnie — seeing as though she had based her whole career on taking care of animals and was absolutely more capable than Shane — and then had rushed straight to work, ignoring the canine at his heels.

Shane had been late, anyway, regardless of the dog appearing out of nowhere — he tended to set his alarm clock later, in order to say a subtle _fuck you_ to Morris — but he’d still found himself thinking about the thing during his ‘punishment’ of having to actually serve the customers that used the JojaMart.

It was a mongrel, in the most literal sense of the word: a mix of floppy ears, tufts of golden, scrappy fur, bright eyes and a trigger-happy bark that would have stopped the street — if they lived on one, that was.

When he’d gotten home, the first thing Shane had seen of it had been Jas trying to dress it up; he’d immediately been reminded of Marnie having to literally stuff him in a tux for Kent and Jodi’s wedding. There was a game that he’d played, with Jas’s mom, when they were growing up, trying to spot dogs that looked like their owners.

Jas loved the thing. Marnie tolerated it. Shane had even caught her smuggling treats to it, once. He thought that had been enough.

That was why it had been a shock, that morning — on one of his days off — when Marnie pulled him aside.

“I think you should take it upfield,” she had said, eyes drifting to the dog. “To the farmer’s ranch. They can take care of it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Shane. “What can the _farmer_ give that we can’t?”

“Well,” said Marnie, “it’s not that. We just don’t have any room, Shane. Sure, it would be lovely to have a sheepdog, but we have so few sheep that it’s not really necessary — and that dog would rather sleep than chase sheep.”

“I get the logic,” Shane said, “I just —”

“I know you’ve bonded,” Marnie said, finally, looking at him. “And I’m sorry, Shane. I was talking with Robin the other day and she might have planted the idea. It must be so lonely, up there,” she said. “That farmer’s got no-one left.”

“I was going to say _Jas_ , actually,” Shane replied, acerbic. “Are _you_ going to be the one telling her that you’ve given up the dog to some city-slicker she doesn’t even know? And how is it our fault they’re ‘lonely’?”

“It’s not,” Marnie said. “Please, Shane. Take the dog and go.”

He liked to argue with her, but, for Shane, it usually ended up that he’d eventually agree and do whatever Marnie asked. He wasn’t being weak-willed, either — he could definitely hold his own — but Marnie was the closest thing to a friend Shane had in this town, excluding Jas. Outside of their home, Shane only really talked to Gus, when he was ordering from the bar, and Pam — when he had ordered from the bar enough.

Shane wasn’t really a good friend to have, anyway. He’d been a flake, even before he’d fallen off the wagon, and, nowadays, he was usually too hungover to get up the will to do anything productive apart from work. The dog was a distraction from all of that. A good one.

And now they were giving it away.

It had been years since they’d been able to use the shortcut from the forest to the farm. After the new farmer’s grandfather had died, he’d left the property to his family, which, Shane remembered, had been a major sticking point of conflict between Mayor Lewis, who had wanted to sell the land to build a housing development — what a shit-show _that_ had been, even at Shane’s then-age of eight — and the rest of Pelican Town, who had wanted to preserve the land for whoever later came to claim it.

’Later’ had turned out to be twenty-odd years, give or take. Those two decades hadn’t been kind to the farm to the north of the ranch. Trees and weeds had grown wild and years of debris had clogged up the natural scene, leaving a _beautiful_ wasteland of trash and stone to be fished out of the stagnant, flood-made pond, the one that himself and Jas’s parents had — with the grandfather’s permission, of course — fished in as kids, using plastic toy rods.

Good memories. Rare thing.

The last time that he’d gone up there was to rescue one of Marnie’s goats. The thing had been systematically chewing through a weak spot in the Big Barn Marnie was housing him in and, eventually, made his big break out into the clearing.

Now, Shane really wasn’t a big-tree hugger — he left that kind of shit up to Leah — but standing there, completely lost, even though he just had taken one step onto what was technically the farmer’s land, he’d gotten the feeling that he’d been completely enveloped into nature.

It had seemed like the tree branches had conspired together in draping themselves so low. All had exploded out into smaller, whiskery stabs of wood, dotting around his eye-line, betting against each other to see who would scratch Shane’s face the most; their ends exploded out to leathery, waxed leaves that cast green shadows onto the barren soil.

It had taken him hours to find the damn goat, and he’d come back to little more fanfare than a repaired barn and Jas playing first-aid kit doctor for him. He’d played nurse.

Shane cut through town as quickly as he could, leash in his right hand and dog bowl in his left. Even if he hadn’t wanted to avoid literally everyone, it seemed the dog was of a similar mind — it raced past Jodi’s, and Emily’s and Haley’s, and only turned to go into the plaza once Shane had dug his heels in to slow his roll.

Walking the dog was a chore he’d only really done in the forest; there was something mind-blowingly normal about it, and Shane knew that _normal_ wasn’t a word that was associated with him, most of the time. He didn’t want to give George a heart attack. It was the same reason he didn’t shave every day.

Pierre spotted him going past, stopping dead on his way to the General Store. The pallet of vegetable seeds he was carrying jostled with the sudden movement.

“Shane, I didn’t know you had a dog,” he said, an air of disbelief in his tone.

“Go fuck yourself, pal,” Shane called out in turn, as cheerily as he could muster. “Open your shop on a _Wednesday_ sometime!”

He gave him a wave with the dog bowl and moved on. No wonder Caroline had cheated on him with the Wizard. Asshole.

Shane steered the dog away from the park — he was sure that letting it play in the sand was possibly the worst idea ever, especially considering the trigger-happy Neighbourhood Watch connections people seemed to have in this town — and towards the bus stop.

The farm’s entrance was at the end of the road, so it wasn’t long before he had to hop the gate. It was like he used to do as a teenager, breaking in and drinking, underage, with his friends on the porch of a farmhouse that hadn’t been used in years.

There were quite a few differences between back then and the present, but the weirdest one to Shane was that there was now someone _living_ there. It didn’t seem real.

Shane set down the bowl on the grass and unlocked the gate for the dog to bound through, nearly knocking him over with his paws. Shane gave him a scratch behind the ears — it probably wouldn’t do well for the farmer to catch him in a full on petting session with the dog on private property — before swinging the screeching wooden thing shut.

It was only after that he turned around.

The farmer had been _busy_. The scene in front of him was nearly unrecognisable.

Whilst there still was that familiar, thick thatch of trees and grass in the distance, there was now an open stretch of land in front of the house that tailed off into a clear path to the back-woods. A line of what _looked_ to be cauliflower leaves had sprung up from the ground. Their neighbours were a set of empty trellises that had been stuck in the tilled dirt underneath, tiny seedlings — beans, probably — sprouting up next to them, not tall enough to wrap around.

There were other plants, but Shane didn’t know what they were. The majority of his farming knowledge came from drunk internet searches and what he’d picked up from Marnie over the years. He preferred animals, anyway.

Leash in hand, Shane turned back to the house. He made his way up the steps of the porch. Curling his hand into a fist, he got ready to knock on the door — only for it to swing back, nearly causing him to fall onto the farmer.

He regained his balance as the farmer stared at him. Their wide eyes were focused on Shane, obviously trying to put together why he was on the farm’s doorstep. A sudden look of recognition, and then —

“— You’re Shane, right?”

Shane blinked, momentarily blind-sided. So they _had_ met. Somehow, this put him more at ease. If the farmer had remembered his name…

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think I was drunk when I met you.”

“To be honest,” the farmer replied, “that _would_ make sense. You point-blank _told_ me that you didn’t know me and asked why I was talking to you, which probably requires a loss of tact. Unless you’re just like that?”

Their accent, unsurprisingly, reminded him of the city — he’d lived in Zuzu for a little while, too, even picked up some of the local peculiarities that still shaped the way he talked. When Shane came back, the clipped tone and sharp phrases he’d grown to use over the time he’d spent there _hadn’t_ been appreciated. He wondered if Granny Evelyn had said to the farmer’s face that they sounded rude yet.

“That’s just how I am,” Shane said, his tone betraying how much he wished it wasn’t true. “Normally, I don’t talk to anyone at the bar. I guess you were persistent enough.”

The farmer crossed their arms. “That was a real ugly compliment, if you were trying to make one. Can you get out of my door, friend? I need to water my plants.”

 _Definitely_ Zuzu. Shane stepped to the side, letting the farmer through. “Crops,” he called out after them.

The farmer paused, but didn’t turn. “What are you going on about?”

“Crops, not plants,” Shane said, not being able to resist digging the hole he’d made even deeper. “You’re running a farm, not an allotment, pal.”

The farmer whirled around. Apparently, that had been the last straw.

“ _Look,_ buddy,” they said, before breaking off and pointing at the space next to Shane — a space that was filled by the animal next to him. “…That’s a dog.”

“Yeah,” said Shane. “Sure is.”

The farmer promptly put the watering can down on the step and walked back up, crouching so that they were eye-level with the dog. “May I…?”

“Sure,” said Shane. “Whatever.”

The farmer proceeded to pet the dog. “What’s their name?”

Shane frowned. They’d just been calling it ‘the dog’. “Uh, I don’t know.”

The farmer shot him a look. “This is your dog and you don’t know its name?”

“It’s not my dog,” Shane said. _Not anymore, at least._ “Marnie sent me up here to give it to you.”

“You’re kidding,” said the farmer. “I mean, aren’t you?”

“If you don’t want it,” Shane said, quickly, “I can take it —”

“No, no!” The farmer’s hands did an intricate gesture that probably translated to _if you take this happiness from me I will end you. “_ I’m totally a dog person. It’s just unexpected, you know?”

“Tell me about it,” Shane said. “I didn’t even know I was going to be doing this until today.”

The farmer ignored him. “Boy or a girl?”

“Boy,” Shane replied. He didn’t actually know — it didn’t really bother him, and he spent most of his days in the JojaMart anyway — but damned if he wasn’t going to come up empty-handed when he was asked for an answer again. He wasn’t sure if dogs had come up with the concept of gender anyway.

The farmer stood, suddenly assessing Shane. What for, he didn’t know — all he knew was that he felt slightly exposed under their stare.

“I’ve got a couple of brewskis out back,” they said, suddenly. “At least, I think I do. And some fold-out chairs that have seen better days. You want to shoot the breeze for a while?”

“Thought you had to ‘water your plants’,” Shane pointed out. It did seem like a good idea, but it wasn’t an activity with Shane without him finding a way to ruin it somehow. It was only economical that he was trying to do it right away. “Won’t they get thirsty?”

“As you might have guessed,” the farmer said, “I know shit-all about farming. Do you want to come in while I get the grog, or are you just going to stand out here and admire my handiwork?”

“I’ll stay where I am, thanks.”

The farmer shrugged and turned on their heel, disappearing inside. In the split second that the door was open, Shane was able to see the interior of the farmhouse; it looked homely, bare shiplap on the walls and hardwood on the floors. There didn’t look to be any sources of light, either — there _was_ a fireplace, but there was no wood in it and the ceiling was bare of any kind of bulb.

It seemed kind of… monastic, if Shane were to give any word to it. It made sense; who would move all the way to what amounted to a cabin in the woods if they didn’t want to disappear?

Suddenly, the farmer being surprised seeing him at the door made a _lot_ more sense. Shane lived with people, he’d never really been alone — but he sure was lonely, most of the time. And the farmer, probably, was both.

Said farmer emerged a half-minute later, holding two blue cans. A pair of fold-out chairs — folded in — were wedged in-between their arm and their side. As soon as Shane had registered that piece of information, they had been dropped on the floor.

He shot a cursory glance at the farmer, who raised an eyebrow. The eyebrow said something like _I don’t have four hands, Shane._ The way the farmer rattled the cans with her two occupied ones backed that up.

Shane took that as _his_ cue to pick them back off of the porch and set them up. Zuzu city-slickers had their own language, it seemed, in the form of facial expressions. Apparently, he knew how to read it. He didn’t really speak it, though; everything that he had said to the farmer had gone down the wrong way.

…Which was probably the right thing. He wasn’t really a good person to know.

When they’d settled into the chairs, watching the dog — who was more than pleased with his new surroundings and had immediately begun to explore — the farmer passed him his drink.

“Well, it turned out I was being a big fat liar about the whole beer thing,” they said, as Shane turned it over in his hand. “Joja Cola. It’s all I got that’s cold, sorry.”

“You sure you don’t have anything stronger?” Shane asked, squinting at the blacked-out space where the logo should have been visible. “Did you scribble out the name in permanent marker?”

“Trust me,” the farmer said, “when you’ve spent several years of your life staring up at the same sign, you get pretty sick of it.” They popped the cap and sighed. “Plus, you shouldn’t talk about day-drinking in front of the dog. You’re setting a bad example to your canine child, there.”

Shane snorted. “Your dog now,” he said, but his mind was whirring into gear at what the farmer had unintentionally revealed. _They’d worked at Joja?_

 _“_ Well, if I see him at Gus's, I’m blaming you,” the farmer said, taking a sip. “Besides, you’re going to come for visits. Isn’t he, boy?” The last question was directed to the dog, who had come up to visit.

Shane’s shoulders felt lighter, somehow. “What, like shared custody?”

“Something like that,” the farmer said. They shrugged. They did that a lot, Shane had noticed; it was something you could appreciate, given the right setting, seeing the muscles in their shoulders at work. “No, actually, I’m lying.”

“Oh,” said Shane. This was why he didn’t try and make friends —

“— Yeah,” the farmer said. “I’m buttering you up to steal your dog food. Then I’m going to abandon this arrangement. It’ll be a very sad day when you’re finally deprived of my presence. For you, I mean. _I’ll_ be fine.”

“You have a wicked sense of humour,” Shane said, finally, relaxing into the material of his chair. He didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it was true. “You know, I think I can hold on until then.”

“I’m so glad to hear it,” the farmer said, and reached forward to clink her can with his in a cheer. The _clink_ sounded more like a _clunk,_ and the sloshing of soda all-but-ruined whatever moment they were trying to create. “I was worried for a second.”

“Well, I’m moved that you care so much about me,” said Shane. He drank the soda, and then, very deliberately, said, “You used to work for Joja?”

“Just call me _Office Drone 74,_ ” the farmer said. “Literally, that’s how I was referred to in company emails. It got very confusing at times.”

“Why did you leave?” Shane asked, out of morbid curiosity. “Why are you here in the Valley? Why move all the way to the southern coast?”

“I was in _dire need of a change,”_ the farmer answered. They sounded like they were quoting something — their accent had briefly changed, taking on Pelican Town twangs and mimicking a loose drawl that — if Shane wasn’t mistaken — was vaguely reminiscent of the memories he had of the farmer’s grandfather. “Lost sight of what mattered most, you know? Needed to get out.”

“Wish I could do that,” Shane said. The farmer gave him a questioning look. “I work for the JojaMart in town. Soul-sucking isn’t even the worst of it.”

The farmer shook their head. “I saw that big concrete monolith my second day here,” they said. “Freaked me out. Thought I could get away without those little reminders of the city. I haven’t even been in.”

“There’s not much to see,” said Shane. “It’s about as charming on the inside as it is on the outside. Thing is, I don’t see myself working anywhere else.”

“I’ve been there,” the farmer said. They thought for a moment. “Maybe you should go back in time and convince your grandfather to drop everything in his life in order to go and run a farm. Then you can spend your days smashing rocks instead. It’s extremely cathartic.”

“Yeah?” Shane thought about imagining Morris as a rock to shatter. He huffed. “ _Now_ who’s setting a bad example to the dog?”

At the sound of his voice, the dog perked up, trotting over to see Shane. Shane patted him as it turned around and — very painfully — whacked him with its tail.

The farmer blinked at the reaction, then turned to Shane, an incredulous expression on their face. “Have you _seriously_ trained the dog to answer to ‘the dog’?”

Shane tilted his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “Hey, dog.”

The dog’s ears perked up.

“You _have,_ ” the farmer said, a faint glee in their voice. “This is classic. I’m going to have to get a collar that just says _The Dog_. This is the best gift you have ever given me.”

“I’ve known you for less than a day,” Shane pointed out. “I don’t even know your _name_ , not really.”

“Seriously, pal? What have you been calling me in your head, then?” the farmer asked. “A dog named The Dog and a farmer called…”

“Well, ‘the Farmer’,” Shane supplied, not even feeling ashamed. “There’s a theme.”

The farmer threw their head back in response, laughing roughly with their whole body.

There were the shoulders, again — but there was the way that they were _breathing_ , too, chest rising and sinking, and the way their hair caught the sunlight. The eyes that Shane had been sneaking glances at were screwed shut, but he felt like such a _creep_ for already knowing their exact shade.

To be fair, it wasn’t a colour that he’d be likely to forget.

Shane had never really met anyone like the farmer before, he realised. It felt like they were judging him not on what the town saw him as, but for how he really was — despite whatever that equated to on the outside. He was matched, wit for wit.

They had a lot of similarities, too, the farmer and Shane. They’d both worked for Joja; they both now lived in Pelican Town; they both had lived in the city; they both had longed to get away.

Whatever that had meant, it had led to this moment — both of them sitting on a half-broken wooden deck, watching the middle distance and drinking cola with a way-too-happy dog at their feet.

The act of Shane making good memories — and decisions — may have been a rare thing, but he got the inexplicable feeling _that_ was what he was doing with the farmer. Making good memories.

Seeing them laugh was a plus. A very good plus.

“Do you want to know my name?” the farmer asked, suddenly sober. “‘Cause, I’m telling you, I kind of like that nickname. Snappy _and_ descriptive. You’ve a real talent, there.”

“I’d be interested to see how your real name stacks up, then,” Shane replied.

The farmer smiled before they gave it to him, the syllables shimmering like the colours in a prismatic shard, invisible in the air.

It was enough to make Shane smile back.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
